Racist scumbag embarrasses my home state

Alaska can't get a break. For most of its existence, Alaskans have had to put up with silly stereotypes of igloos, prospectors, and a polar bear in every kitchen. Then along came the Palins, money grubbing publicity hounds who made the Alaskan electorate look like a bunch of idiots. Now we get this guy, who makes Alaskans look like ignorant racists.

COMES NOW Gordon Warren Epperly, Pro Se, challenging the Nomination Petition of Barack Hussein Obama II, Aka Barack Hussein Obama, Aka Barack H. Obama or his Electors to appear on the Primary and General Election Ballots of the State of Alaska as a Candidate for the Office of President of the United States of America.

[...]

As stated above, for an Individual to be a Candidate for the Office of President of the United States, the Candidate must meet the qualifications as set forth in the United States Constitution and one of those qualifications is that the Candidate shall be a "natural born Citizen" of the United States. As Barack Hussein Obama II is of the "Mulatto" race, his status of citizenship is founded upon the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before the [purported] ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the race of "Negro" or "Mulatto" had no standing to be citizens of the United States under the United States Constitution.

After this, he goes off into that branch of birtherism that says Obama cannot be a citizen unless both of his parents were citizens. But that's just gravy. The real meat of argument is that only white males are allowed to hold office. In a footnote to his document, he claims Dred Scott is still the law, meaning no one of African ancestry can be a citizen.

Epperly is some sort of crank who writes letters to the Juneau newspaper and files legal documents that reflect the bizzare sovereign citizen legal teachings so popular with the militia crowd. In the past he has harrassed the National Archivist with demands for proof that the Fourteenth Amendment is really the law of the land. For the last few years he has called Lisa Murkowski a usurper because women, white or not, are not allowed to hold political office.

What did Alaska do to deserve this?

I hate bullies, I really hate bullies

Tea Party Nation's Rich Swier is, without question, the most disgusting person in America this week. Maybe someone more vile than Swier will pop up tomorrow, but I have no doubt that he will still have earned a high spot on my worst persons in the world list at the end of the year.

Swier, who has a radio show in Sarasota, Florida, is a minor figure on the far right and uses his influence to advance all of the worst aspects of the tea party movement. As Vice President of United West.org, he warns his readers about the threat Shariah Islam (sic) poses to the US Constitution.* At Red County, he encourages his readers to boycott Disney because their new Pixar movie Cars 2 is eco propaganda. At Tea Party Nation, he despairs because the White Protestant character of the US is going extinct as brown immigrants flood the country. But, what makes him stand out from the ranks of third-tier right wing extremists is his unblushing defense of bullying.

Bullying among children and teens has been around forever. Usually, the grown-up response has been to ignore it, dismiss the importance of it, and occasionally even encourage it. Only very recently have the adults who have the responsibility for protecting kids begun to offer more than tepid disapproval for bullying. As the anti-bullying movement was gaining steam in the US, many people were made aware of the problem by several suicides of young gay people getting wide coverage by the press. These suicides have had mixed results for the anti-bullying movement. On the one hand, they dramatized the seriousness of the problem. On the other hand, they inextricably tied the movement, in many peoples' minds to LGBT civil rights.

Public support of anti-bullying efforts has almost exactly paralleled that of hate crime legislation. On the face of it, hate crimes legislation should not be controversial. Everyone belongs to a group someone else hates, whether it is their race, religion, age, sex, class, state of health, or club membership. When a person is attacked for being part of a group, it goes beyond an attack on that one person; it becomes an attack on that group. Burning a cross in an African American family's yard is more than vandalizing their lawn; it an effort to intimidate all blacks and tell them that they are not welcome there. It is terrorism writ small. Hate crime laws add additional time to the sentence of someone guilty of such an attack on a group.** Hate crime legislation ran into resistance only when some of the sponsors of the legislation tried to add sexual preference to the list of characteristics vulnerable to hate crimes.

Now that anti-bullying efforts have become identified as an LGBT issue, the religious right is using the same fear inducing tactics they used to rally their supporters against hate crime legislation. Anti-bullying, they argue, is a sinister wedge by which the radical homosexual agenda will teach our kids homosexuality. They claim the legislation will ban all speech critical of gays. They darkly warn that Christianity itself could be criminalized (making the unstated claim that their particular hateful interpretation represents all Christianity). Opposition to hate crime legislation and anti-bullying have become an article of faith on the religious right and, through their influence, an article of faith in the Republican Party. Google around for a few minutes and you'll see that I'm not exaggerating.

So far, most religious conservatives have contented themselves with opposing anti-bullying programs. Rich Swier takes things one step further, he argues that bullying--at least of gays--is a good thing. Swier is outraged that the group Gulf Coast Gives raised money to bring "homosexual activist" Hudson Taylor (a straight athlete) to Sarasota to give a talk about bullying of LGBT kids. Swier sets his argument up this way:

The problem is the entire bullying campaign is a sham created by radical gay activist Kevin Jennings. ... As MassResistance.org reports, "The homosexual movement in the public schools has always been based on lies and deception. But until the mid-1990s, they were still having difficulty getting into the schools. Then they found the key to their huge success -- what they call 're-framing the issue'".

So what does "re-framing the issue" mean?

It means changing the dialogue from homosexuality is bad behavior to bullying homosexuals is even worse behaior.(sic)

Swier then quotes from a 1995 presentation by Jennings that he believes reveals the plot by the "homosexual movement" to get to our kids through the school system.

"In Massachusetts the effective reframing of this issue was the key to the success of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. We immediately seized upon the opponent's calling card--safety--and explained how homophobia represents a threat to students' safety by creating a climate where violence, name-calling, health problems, and suicide are common. Titling our report 'Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth,' we automatically threw our opponents onto the defensive and stole their best line of attack. This framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling from day one.

[...]

We know that, confronted with real-life stories of youth who had suffered from homophobia, our opponents would have to attack people who had already been victimized once, which put them in a bully position from which it would be hard to emerge looking good. More importantly, we made sure these youth met with elected officials so that, the next time these officials had to vote on something, there would be a specific face and story attached to the issue. We wanted them to have an actual kid in mind when they had to cast their votes.

"This," Swier concludes, "is not bullying. It is peer pressure and is healthy." What is "this?" The only behavior aimed at LGBT kids up to that point in his piece is violence and name-calling. Swier apparently thinks these activities are healthy peer pressure. He continues: "There are many bad behaviors such as smoking, under age (sic) drinking and drug abuse that are behaviors that cannot be condoned. Homosexuality falls into this category." I'm sure we all remember in high school when the concerned jocks went around beating up kids who drank in order to lovingly remind them that such behaviors cannot be condoned.

Swier likes his essay. He published it at Red County, Tea Party Nation ran it as an editorial (no link, registration required), and he pasted a version of it in the comments at Gulf Coast Gives. However far his influence reaches, he has now provided anti-gay bigots with an argument that bullying is a good thing. What will kids think when they hear so-called adults claiming that bullying is healthy peer pressure? Whether or not they believe it, how many bullies will be tempted to try it out as a justification for behavior that should not be condoned?

LGBT kids are not the only kids who are bullied. Bullies target anyone who is vulnerable and a little different. Black kids, poor kids, nerds, fat kids, new kids, those who don't speak English very well, the handicapped, the unattractive, the short, the unathletic, and the shy are all subject to torment. In order to continue expressing their disapproval of gays, conservatives will gladly throw all these kids under the bus and return to the traditional "kids will be kids" dismissal of the very real psychological and physical terror that is inflicted on the bullied.

Society among school age kids is made up of various binary distinctions: jocks vs. nerds, popular kids vs. unpopular kids, the demographic majority vs. minorities, kids who come from over here vs. kids who come from over there, bullies vs. the bullied. Which of the last two do you think Rich Swier was?

NOTE: I have made some grammatical corrections and rearranged two paragraphs for better clarity since first posting this piece.

* Appropriately, the animated globe at the center of United West's logo is spinning backwards. They also have a poll on the Islamic threat that you might want to crash.

** Extra sentences, based on context, are nothing new. Murder of a political leader is called assassination and is treated as more serious than other murders. Punching a fireman in the nose during a bar brawl is nowhere as serious as punching a fireman in the nose while he's trying to put out a fire.

Arizona on the edge, or over it

Everyone thinks their state legislature is the most embarrassing in the country and that the rest of America must be pointing and laughing at them whenever the lege is in session. Most of the time, no one notices what their own legislature is up to, let alone what other states are up to. It usually takes something utterly moronic, like a an anti-evolution bill or a statewide dress code banning droopy pants, to get the attention of the rest of the country. However, this year has been a banner year for bad legislation and bad behavior by legislators. Right-wing extremists have taken over half of the legislatures in the land and bizarre statements by confused local radicals get regular national coverage on the nightly news.

This brings us to Arizona's Russell Pearce. Pearce first blipped onto the national radar screen last year as the author of Arizona's hyper-profiling law SB 1070. He followed up on that bill by proposing one of the first "birthright" laws to limit the 14th Amendment, which automatically grants citizenship to all children born in the United States. In other states, Republican have proposed their own legislation that imitates Pearce's two odious bills. The second bill besides besides building on the anti-immigrant bigotry popular in parts of the right also builds on a revival of anti-federal, states' rights sentiment being voiced in the same circles. Pandering to the new states' rights movement has resulted in Republicans proposing nullification laws, speaking favorably of secession, and embracing a strange constitutional interpretation that has come to be called "tentherism." The tenthers claim that the 10th Amendment essentially prevents the federal government from doing anything that isn't very specifically mentioned in the body of the Constitution. In trying to stay ahead of the tenther and birthright movements, Pearce yesterday moved into the realm of militia-style constitutional nonsense by claiming there is no such thing as US citizenship.

Now U.S. history, most of us weren’t around when the Constitution was written. But you remember we kind of existed before Congress, the states. We-we-we created the Congress, we created the federal government, by compact. Do you know what existed before the Congress, the states? Do you know, you’re not a citizen of the United States; you’re a citizen of a sovereign state. The fifty sovereign states makes up United States. We’re citizens of those sovereign states. It is not a delegated authority. It’s an inherent authority that states have over the federal government. [applause] It’s about time somebody gets it right!

You're going to have to look hard to find a constitutional authority to back him up on this. My passport was issued by the government of the United States and very clearly states in several places that I am a citizen of the United States. The state of Washington is not mentioned in my passport though there is a space where I could mention it as part of my mailing address.

Those who believe as Pearce does could say that my passport lies since it was issued by the wicked federal government. Okay, let's go back to the Constitution itself. The phrase "Citizen of the United States" appears three times in the body of the Constitution (when setting forth the requirements for Representative, Senator, and President). The phrase is not "Citizen of one of the United States." It clearly means that we are citizens of an entity called "the United States." The word Citizen (always capitalized) is also used when describing residents of individual states, but the implication is that we are citizens of the United States as well as citizens of the constituent states.

Five amendments deal with the rights of citizens (the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th). All of them use the phrase "citizens of the United States" to describe the people that are are the subject of the amendment. The 14th Amendment--the one most hated by the anti-immigrant wing of the far right--states that all "persons born or naturalized in the United States" are "citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." this, again, makes clear the we are citizens both of individual states and of a larger entity called the United States.

Pearce's denial of US citizenship sounds suspiciously like "sovereign citizenship," a legal theory popular inside the militia movement. Proponents of "sovereign citizenship" deny the very legitimacy of the US government. The list of issues close to the hearts of followers of this ideology will be familiar to anyone who has looked at the tea party movement. They claim the income tax is illegitimate, the Federal Reserve is illegal, they want to repeal the 17th amendment (direct election of Senators), they want to return to the gold standard, they believe that there is a suppressed "real" 13th Amendment, they hate the federal court system and judges in general, and they think there is just something wrong with the 14th Amendment. This is very clear in their language when they draw a distinction between sovereign citizens and "14th Amendment citizens."

Among the various subjects of energetic sovereign citizen revisionism, perhaps none is more important than the 14th Amendment. Ratified in 1868, the Amendment had several aims, including the guaranteeing of United States citizenship for the ex-slaves. But to sovereign citizens it did much more; they claim that before its ratification, virtually no one was a "citizen of the United States." One would previously have been a citizen of the republic of Ohio or of some other state; only residents of Washington, D.C., or federal territories were citizens of the United States. The 14th Amendment created an entirely new class of citizens, they argue, one that anybody, theoretically, could voluntarily join.

But to become a citizen of the United States was to willingly subject oneself to the complete authority of the federal and state governments; clearly, no one would want to do this. The government, therefore, tricked people into entering into its jurisdiction and that of the "corporate" state government by having them sign contracts with it. The trick was that people did not even realize they were signing contracts: these included items like Social Security cards, drivers' licenses, car registrations, wedding licenses or even, as [Oklahoma City bomber] Terry Nichols noted, hunting licenses and zip codes.

Pearce, like many Republican politicians over the last two years, is rushing farther and farther to the right in an effort to stay ahead of his increasingly radicalized constituents. It's an ugly spiral. His rush to the right, legitimizes radical ideas and encourages his less radical followers to move farther right, which forces him farther right, and so on. Pearce has no moved beyond the realm of being merely a very conservative politician into outright sedition against the government. With his birthright law, he does not use the legal process of amending the Constitution to get rid of a part he dislikes; he is attempting to use the legislative process of one state to override the Constitution. This is wrong on two accounts. First of all, laws cannot void a part of a constitution; they must operate within the parameters set by the appropriate constitution. Secondly, the laws and constitutions of the various states are subordinate to the US Constitution.

I'm not intimate enough with Arizona politics to know if Pearce is a true believer in sovereign citizenship or just a demagogue. If the former, by renouncing his US citizenship, he is unfit to hold public office an might not be legally allowed to hold office in Arizona. If the latter, we can hope that the voters of Arizona will finally say enough! and pull back from the brink. Either way, Pearce is playing a very dangerous game and anyone who follows him should think twice before going any further.

Sidebar: Most Americans, and even Arizonans, are probably not aware that the Territory of Arizona was originally established by the Confederate States of America, not the United States. At the time of Southern secession in 1860/61, the entire Southwest was administered as the Territory of New Mexico. The term Arizona was generally understood to mean only the part of the Territory south of the Gila River, the land brought into the Union by the Gadsen Purchase. The miners and settlers in Arizona felt isolated from the traditional centers of New Mexico around Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Taos. Several times they petitioned the federal government for their own territorial government, but were turned down on account of their tiny population. One curious feature of the proposals was that they all divided the New Mexico Territory into north and south parts, not east and west like the current states.

Having been rebuffed by the Washington government, the proponants of self-rule for Arizona held a convention in March 1861 and voted to join the Confederacy. The fact that the War Department had begun removing troops from the western territories to fight in the East only added to the feelings of Arizonans that Union government didn't care about their needs. The Confederates were quick to take advantage of this situation. In July 1861, a small force under Col. John Baylor, invaded New Mexico from El Paso and defeated the remaining federal forces in a battle near Mesilla. Four days later, Baylor proclaimed the Confederate Territory of Arizona with himself as governor. The borders of the territory included all of the New Mexico territory up to the thirty-fourth parallel.


Most of the Civil War in the southwest was fought on the Rio Grande. First the Confederate army fought its way north, almost to the Colorado border conquering most of the New Mexico Territory. Beginning in April 1862, Union troops mounted a counter offensive and had pushed the Confederates back to Texas by late summer. The fate of Arizona proper paralleled the main campaign. Captain Sherod Hunter organized a militia, the Arizona Rangers, to maintain order around Tucson, but in May 1862, a small invasion force from California was able to brush him aside and reconquer Arizona for the Union.

The legal fiction of a Confederate Arizona lived longer than the physical reality. The Confederate Congress passes a bill formally organizing the territory in January 1862. The next month, Jefferson Davis signed the bill and a representative from Arizona, Granville Oury, was seated in the Confederate Congress. After the territory was reabsorbed into the Union and into New Mexico, a government in exile was set up in Texas and remained in operation till the end of the war.

Despite the fact that they were kind of busy fighting for their lives, the federal government learned the lesson of Arizonan dissatisfaction. One month after Jefferson Davis had offically created the Confederate Territory of Arizona, the US House passed a bill organizing a federal Territory of Arizona consisting of the western half of the New Mexico Territory. Arizona remained a territory for a half century, its citizens being disappointed at having their petitions for statehood turned down as often as their petitions for territoryhood had been. When statehood was finally inevitable, Arizonans had to overcome one last obstacle, Republican Senators who wanted to re-merge the territory with New Mexico to prevent Arizona from electing any more progressive Democrats to Congress. Statehood was finally signed on 14 February 1912, the fiftieth anniversary of Jefferson Davis' proclamation of the Confederate Territory.

Far right extremists, like Russell Pearce, regularly appeal to the themes of Neo-Confederatism. States' rights, nullification, an idiosyncratic vision of independence and self-determination, and defiance of central authority are all part of their rhetorical repertoire. Thus it is pleasantly ironic that these messages are now being turned against them. This month, Arizonans living south of the Gila--the original Arizona--have launched a formal effort to secede and form a new state. They claim as one of their main reasons for undertaking this measure Russell Pearce's "flagrant defiance of the realities of existing constitutional law and the rights of those who live within our borders."

Whatever else they might be, Arizona politics are never boring.

Violent escalation

My friend David Neiwert has been warning us for years that this was coming. Tea Party activists appear to have attempted to murder a member of congress.

Words have consequences. For almost twenty years, the rhetoric of the far right has been getting more violent and eliminationist. Eliminationism is a particular form of rhetoric that not only dehumanizes the oppositon, but that portrays them as a threat to the audience's very life--a threat that must be eliminated if they are to survive. It takes us-and-them rhetoric and cranks it up to eleven: only one of us can live. The most common imagery in this style of rhetoric is painting the opposition as a disease or as vermin. Of course, a few comments of this kind will show up in any heated debate, but when it is a steady drumbeat, day after day, it amounts to nothing less than inciting a mob to massacre the other side. Stalin used it to prepare the countryside for his dekulakization massacres, Hitler to go after Jews and Communists, Radio Rwanda scced the Hutu on the Tutsi, and Milososovic's allies used it start the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia. Death panels, baby killers, end of America, treason, armed rebellion, secession. At one time, no office holding politicial would be seen near such talk; now it the--the Republicans--who are doing the talking.

The Virginia Tea Partiers really, really hate Rep. Tom Perriello. In November the Danville TEA Party planned to hold an event where they would burn Perriello and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in effigy. The event was eventually called off when the farmer, whose land they were going to use, backed out. Yesterday, Sarah Palin today tweeted: "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: 'Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!' Pls see my Facebook page." Her Facebook page showed a map with the districts of twenty Democratic House members marked with crosshairs. Perriello was one of them.

On Monday, Mike Troxel, an organizer for the Lynchburg Tea Party, published what he thought was Perriello's home address with the message, "I personally believe it’s so important for representatives to remain fully grounded and to remember exactly what it is their constituents are saying and how they are telling them to vote. Nothing quite does that like a good face-to-face chat. It has a much more personal touch to it." In fact, Troxel the address published does not belong to Perriello; it belongs to Perriello's brother, Bo, who lives there with his wife and four young children. When told of this fact by the online magazine Politico, Troxel said he would leave the address up until the congressman's office proded him with Perriello's real home address. Troxel also ignored a direct request fromy Perriello's office to take down the address.

Nigel Coleman, the Danville Tea Party Leader who wanted to burn Perriello in effigy last fall, copied the address from Troxel's blog and posted it on his Facebook page with the message, "This is Rep. Thomas Stuart Price Perriello’s home address ... I ain’t holding back anymore!!" When notified by a local paper that, like Troxel, he had put up the wrong address and was actually sending people to the home of Perriello's brother, Coleman shrugged it off. "Do you mean I posted his brother’s address on my Facebook?" Coleman wrote. "Oh well, collateral damage."

Damage is what it almost was. Yesterday, Bo Perriello recieved a threatening letter. In the evening he smelled gas and discovered that the line to a propane tank on his patio had been slashed. FBI, local police, and fire marshalls are investigating the incident as a possible threat on a member of congress. Coleman's cavalier attitude towards collateral damage has dissolved. He is "shocked" and "almost speechless," he "obviously condemn[s] these actions." Naturally, he also denies any responsibility, "we don’t know this is a related event."

Democratic congress members arriving for the healthcare vote walked a gauntlet of angry Tea Partiers. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) was spat on by a protestor. John Lewis (D-GA), a civil rights icon, was called a "ni--er." A small crowd began chanting "fa--t" at Barney Frank (D-MA). Now that intimidation has failed, they are moving on to unveiled threats and actual vilolence. Over the weekend, at least five Democrtaic offices were vandalized. Louise Slaughter's office received a phone message threatening to assasinate the children of lawmakers who voted for the bill. At least ten members of congress have requested extra security. The Virginia police have stepped up patrols in Bo Perriello's neighborhood.

Like Nigel Coleman, the Tea Party leaders, talk radio, and Fox News pundits will all express horror at near tragedy with the Perriellos. They will say the attempted arsonist was a lone crazy who has no connection to them. They will deny that their words have consequences. And, when they are done with their pious denials, they will manage to slip in that, anyway, it's all Perriello and the Democrats' faults for making us mad. Then they will go on demonizing their fellow Americans and priming the pump for the next violent attack.

Tenther nonsense

When Michele Bachmann made her conspiracy theory comments about the census, I thought she would be laughed off the stage. Every census, some nuts on the farthest fringes make that claim that the Census Bureau can't do anything except count people, but only conspiracy nuts and libertarians take them seriously. Bachmann is a bona fide conspiracy nut so no one of any responsibility should have taken her claims seriously. However, not only have so called grownups paid attention to her, they have now built on her arguments to claim healthcare reform is unconstitutional.

Their argument is that the Tenth Amendment prohibits the federal government from doing anything except for the very few things specifically mentioned in the body of the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment reads, in it's entirety:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

That's it. "Powers" is a very vague word. They choose to define it as meaning only those very specific tasks and responsibilities mentioned in the body. If the Constitution doesn't specifically mention healthcare, then the Federal government can't do anything about it.

For the census, here's what the Constitution says in Article I, Section 2, the section on the elction of members of Congress.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers ...[this part, about slaves counting as three fifths of a person, was deleted by the Fourteenth Amendment]. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

They read this to mean the Census can only ask questions about how many people live at a given location. They can't ask their names. They can't write down the address. They can only count. The part about "in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct" must mean something like whether the census counters have to count on their fingers or use paper.

The writers put Congress first in the Constitution--Article one. They must have thought Congress was pretty important, but the tenther line of argument doesn't leave the Congress much to do. They get to pass a budget, declare war, run the Post Office, determine whether census counters count on their fingers or use paper, and not much else.

Over the years, the same argument has been raised whenever the government is doing something that conservatives don't like or that provokes some kind of populist paranoia. In the thirties, conservatives and Republicans pulled out the Tenth Amendment argument to fight the New Deal and declaired that Roosevelt had ended constitutional rule and become a lawless tyrant. Southern politicians pulled out the Tenth Amendment argument during desegregation and declaired that Eisenhower had ended constitutional rule and become a lawless tyrant. When Medicare was being debated in the sixties, Ronald Reagan recorded a speech declairing that Johnson had ended constitutional rule and become a lawless tyrant. You get the idea.

These things sound ridiculous to most of us, but many Republicans are still fighting those battles. Newt Gingrich would like to repeal most of the social legislation of the sixties. Other Republicans are still trying to repeal the reforms and initiatives that Roosevelt used to end the Depression. When the sane among us try to laugh at the tenther argument by pointing out that, by their logic, Social Security, Medicare, veterans' hospitals, and the interstate highway system are unconstitutional, a frightning number of office-holding Republicans will look us in the eye and soberly answer that that, yes, they do think those things are unconstitutional.

Asking them about big government programs doesn't really expose the complete irresponsibility of the tenther argument. There are lots of things that the federal government is involved in, in one way or another, that are not specifically mentioned in the body of the Constitution. Among them:

• Murder
  
• Kidnapping
  
• Predicting the weather
  
• Texas secceeding
  
• Terrorism
  
• The Air Force
  
• Child pornography
  
• Preventing flooding on the Mississippi
  
• Helping people after flooding on the Mississippi
  
• The definition of marriage
  
• Public schools
  
• Illegal immigration
  
• Fighting forest fires
  
• The war on drugs
  
• Air traffic control
  
• People putting poison in our food
  
• Abortion

I think everyone can find something on that list that they think the government should not be involved with, but only the most over the edge libertarians would say they shouldn't be involved anything on that list. Somehow, mainstream Republicans have decided they need to pander to that fringe of the fringe.

One power that is specifically delegated to the government is to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." This means that while the government cannot do anything to fight child pornography, it can standardize shoe sizes. That's the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. That's how it should be.

The museum killer

A few more details are coming out about James von Brunn, the Holocaust Museum shooter. Not surprisingly, he's a white supremacist and Holocaust denier of a Christian civilization flavor. In 1981 he was caught trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board and served four years in prison. At the time he said he was trying to perform some kind of citizen's arrest of a group he considered treasonous. This sounds to me like he's a student of some of the legal theory that the militias often promote. Law enforcement officials are looking into time he spent in Idaho. I can't find any details on what they mean by that. My guess is that he was at the Aryan Nations compound. Identity religion, Antisemitism, standard racism, militia legal theories, and a whole host of other conspiracy theories mixed together with a healthy urge toward violence in that part of the country in the eighties.

I recommend reading everything David Neiwert has to say about this over the next few days (here or here). He is one of, if not the, leading authorities on the subject. His book In God's Country is required reading for anyone interested. Dave also has a new book out on hate radio that has been ignored by most of the news media. He should be on every talking head show. If he's not, I recommend we all start writing to the shows demanding he be on. Start with Maddow and Olbermann and work your way down the list. I will.

It's a good thing right wing extremism isn't a threat in this country.

and piously they said a grace*

well boss
as much as it pains me
to say it
it looks like cheney
and his goons
on the far side of the aisle
may have had
the right dope after all
obama was elected
and the terrorists
have attacked

looking over the news this morning
i see that someone walked
into a church on sunday
as people often do
and shot a doctor
which people don t do
at least not in church
not yet
let s hope this doesn t
start a trend

the holy cows
of the religious right and
all their mindless acolytes
hated george tiller
with a burning hate
that shamed the novae
and supernovae
that light the skies
of distant worlds
in the milky way

of course
they never said hate
that s not
the christian way
with love in their hearts
and a song of
praise on their lips
they
called him tiller the killer
called him murderer
called him the mengele of our day
they said hands
were covered with blood
they said he belonged with mao
and hitler
and stalin
they said he must be stopped
they said he must be brought to
ironic quote justice ironic unquote

then they
bombed his clinic
laid siege to his clinic
shot him once
sent their jesse and his camera
to chase his lawyer
and another camera
to chase him
and call him more names
investigated him
prosecuted him
they discovered
a series of pipes
that they could use
to put his face on wanted posters
and tell their friends
how to find his home
to watch him
and call him still more
scary names

they cried
who will rid us of this troublesome doctor
and someone killed him
in a church
who could have
predicted such a thing

then
they said
we are shocked
shocked we tell you
to find that
anyone would listen to us
and act on our words
we hate violence and
hope no one will
think we are to blame
we have only
love in our hearts
and a song of
praise on our lips
we are as pure as
the driven snow
no terrorists we

with wide eyed innocence
they asked the whirring
cameras of the fourth estate
if other doctors
feel a terror
that other assassins
might be inspired
to do the same
and flee their clinics
and their patients
how can that be
our fault
we are secure
they said
in the knowledge
that terror never comes
from the right and
the church going
assassins are always
other people

and piously they said a grace

* or archy revised by john

aesop revised by archy

a wolf met a spring
lamb drinking
at a stream
and said to her
you are the lamb
that muddied this stream
all last year
so that i could not get
a clean fresh drink
i am resolved that
this outrage
shall not be enacted again
this season i am going
to kill you
just a minute said the lamb
i was not born last
year so it could not
have been i
the wolf then pulled
a number of other
arguments as to why the lamb
should die
but in each case the lamb
pretty innocent that she was
easily proved
herself guiltless
well well said the wolf
enough of that argument
you are right and i am wrong
but i am going to eat
you anyhow
because i am hungry
stop exclamation point
cried a human voice
and a man came over
the slope of the ravine
vile lupine marauder
you shall not kill that
beautiful and innocent
lamb for i shall save her
exit the wolf
left upper exit
snarling
poor little lamb
continued our human hero
sweet tender little thing
it is well that i appeared
just when i did
it makes my blood boil
to think of the fright
to which you have been
subjected in another
moment i would have been
too late come home with me
and the lamb frolicked
about her new found friend
gambolling as to the sound
of a wordsworthian tabor
and leaping for joy
as if propelled by a stanza
from william blake
these vile and bloody wolves
went on our hero
in honest indignation
they must be cleared out
of the country
the meads must be made safe
for sheepocracy
and so jollying her along
with the usual human hokum
he led her to his home
and the son of a gun
did not even blush when
they passed the mint bed
gently he cut her throat
all the while inveigling
against the inhuman wolf
and tenderly he cooked her
and lovingly he sauced her
and meltingly he ate her
and piously he said a grace
thanking his gods
for their bountiful gifts to him
and after dinner
he sat with his pipe
before the fire meditating
on the brutality of wolves
and the injustice of
the universe
which allows them to harry
poor innocent lambs
and wondering if he
had not better
write to the paper
for as he said
for god s sake can t
something be done about
it

More Wildmon ranting

Donald Wildmon, who I mentioned in the last post whining about this year's Global War on Christmas (GWOC), may not be as well known as Pat Robertson or James Dobson, but he can do fundamentalist crazy talk with the very best. Ed Brayton received an e-mail from him warning about the stakes in this election.

If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity. This "city set on a hill" which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage will be permanent.

And he says that like it would be a bad thing.

Praying for McCain's death

Once again, the far Christian right demonstrates that they are overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

Antiabortion militant and all-round theocratic activist Jay Rogers of Florida, whose blog is called The Forerunner, writes:

Pray for John McCain's salvation and speedy death.

[...]

And then there is this guy, a self-described Christian Reconstructionist whose blog handle is Ixion, and is apparently from Tennessee:

May the LORD cause McCain/Palin to win the White House in 2008, and then smite the godless McCain in favor of Palin. Amen.

Based on the little bit that they know about Palin and her religious beliefs, these guys are ready to pray for the death of a president and all the risky disruption that would go with that. Their desire for a theocracy where they can dictate the moral lives of others completely trumps any rational or practical considerations. They live in dream-like bubble entirely defined by their hatred of other Americans.

So far, this is just the isolated rantings of two bloggers who do not officially speak for any major church or group. But how many others out there share their feelings? Last year Rev. Wiley Drake, then Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray to God to smite the staff of Americans United for Separation of Church and State because they filed a complaint against him with the IRS for violating his church's tax exempt status.

The most extreme elements of the religious right are not happy with McCain as their standard bearer. Many were disappointed by Huckabee's rise and fall. Now they see another chance to put one of their own in office with Palin. We can probably expect to see more of this kind of imprecatory prayer (literally calling on God to damn someone). The Secret Service should keep an eye on this and make sure they limit there actions to prayer. After all, many of these same people come from the wing of the anti-abortion movement that cheers on doctor killers.

Run, Alan, Run

For those who were depressed over the prospect of an election without Alan Keyes, cheer up! He found a party loony enough to nominate him. He’s running under the banner of the California wing of the American Independent Party, which is the party that endorsed segregationist George Wallace back in 1968. For the last few election cycles, the California AIP has been acting as a local branch of the Constitution Party (who passed Keyes over at their nominating convention in April). But, the Constitution Party has been showing some splinters lately.

The whole history of the various schisms and reunions of the AIP and the Constitution Party is too complicated for me to cover here (even if I understood it). The high altitude version goes something like this: The AIp was founded in California in 1967 and became a national third party as George Wallace's party after he left the Democratic Party in 1968. They never again attained that level of prominence and split in 1976 between the neo-Confederates in the South and the mere ultra-conservatives in the rest of the country. In the eighties, the California AIP affiliated with the Populist Party of Holocaust denier Willis Carto, but left after the Populists nominated David Duke in 1988. In 1992, they affiliated as the California branch of the U.S. Taxpayers Party. The U.S. Taxpayers Party became the Constitution Party in 1999.

The Constitution Party is a weird hybrid beast. In many states is has formed branches from the ground up, but in others it took on existing third parties as its official affiliates. They have never quite managed to merge all of the affiliate parties together into a single body. In 2006, nine state parties disaffiliated because the national convention didn't take a hard enough line on abortion.

This year, after failing once again to get the Republican nomination, Alan Keyes showed up at the Constitution Party convention and tried to take the nomination, but they went with someone who had actually been a member of the Party for more than one week. Keyes went off to sulk. Meanwhile, the AIP of California, which had supported Keyes had some kind of leadership crisis (I don't know many of the details) which resulted in two groups claiming to be the real AIP. One group is still affiliated with the Constitution Party and supports its candidate. The other took control of the party website and nominated Keyes as its candidate. The Keyes faction has been recognized by the California Secretary of State's office as the heir to the AIP's ballot position. Rest assured, there will be lawsuits.

This only puts Keyes on the ballot in one state and will probably result in some brawling between the Constitution Party, the California AIP, and possibly the AIP factions in other states. It promises to be great fun for third party watchers everywhere.

Update: Just in case you don't think this will be the most fun campaign of the season, consider this: Keyes' running mate is Pastor Wiley Drake. Pastor Drake is the former 2nd Vice President of the Southern Baptists and briefly gained notoriety last year when he called on his flock to pray for the deaths of various Americans United for Separation of Church and State staffers who were involved in filing an IRS complaint against him for violating the tax exempt status of his church by officially endorsing Mike Huckabee. God did not answer their prayers.

Actions have consequences

One of the people who sent death threats to PZ Myers over his Eucharist comment has managed to get his wife fired from her job.

For those of you arriving late to the story, the background is this: Two weeks ago a student at the University of Central Florida, named Webster Cook, made news when he took a Eucharist, a consecrated communion wafer, out of the campus church. Webster said he originally intended to bring it back to his pew to show a curious non-Catholic friend before consuming it. When a church leader tried to seize the wafer from him, Cook got mad and left the church with the uneaten wafer. This turned into a stand-off, with the church demanding he return the wafer, Cook demanding an apology, and the local press running headlines like "'Body Of Christ' Snatched From Church, Held Hostage By UCF Student." The headlines were just the beginning of the silliness. The local diocese promptly declared Cook's action a hate crime and dispatched a nun to protect the Eucharist from attacks by unbelievers during the next mass.

At this point, William Donohue became involved. Donohue is a notorious anti-Semite and homophobe who claims without authority to be a spokesman for all American Catholics. For reasons no one can explain, the cable news networks regularly give him a platform from which to dispense his fringe rantings. Donohue issued a press release through his group the Catholic League:

For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage—regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance—is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.

Donohue's followers began swamping the university with demands that Cook be expelled and/or jailed and many sent harassing letters to Cook himself damning him to hell. Some included death threats. The school responded with armed guards--for the Eucharist at the mass.

Enter PZ Myers. P-Zed commented on his blog Pharyngula at the silliness of it all saying "It's a frackin' cracker!" adding:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare.

This rude comment sent Donohue into an apoplectic fit.

The Myers blog can be accessed from the university’s website. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the "Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws." One of the school’s policies, "Code of Conduct," says that "When dealing with others," faculty et al. must be "respectful, fair and civil." Accordingly, we are contacting the President and the Board of Regents to see what they are going to do about this matter. Because the university is a state institution, we are also contacting the Minnesota legislature.

It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ. We look to those who have oversight responsibility to act quickly and decisively.

Donohue's message was a clear call for his followers to lay siege to the University of Minnesota with demands for P-Zed's firing and they responded with zeal. Some might think that P-Zed's irreverent comment crosses some sort of line and that he indeed deserves to face stiff consequences, but before you think that consider these two points. First, P-Zed didn't actually commit any kind of desecration or sacrilege; he merely made a rhetorical offer to do so. Second, and more importantly, he made this offer on his own time in a forum unconnected to the University. Donohue deliberately misleads on this point. P-Zed's blog Pharyngula is hosted by Seed magazine on its ScienceBlogs site. The pages are clearly marked as such. P-Zed has always been scrupulously clear that his blogging expresses his thoughts and are not endorsed by the University of Minnesota, or by Seed or by any of the other sciencebloggers for that matter. For the university to punish or censor what P-Zed says on his own time in his own space would be a massive intrusion into his private life and violation of his right to free speech. "Myers blog can be accessed from the university’s website" only by following a link from his personal faculty page to his blog. By playing the game of six degrees of internet separation I'm sure I could "access" Nazi or pedophile pages from Donohue's Catholic League.

In a bizarre follow up, Thomas E. Foley, a Virginia delegate to the Republican National Convention to be held in Minneapolis next month has asked for extra security to provided by the police to Catholic churches during the convention. Directly referencing Donohue as a source of his information, Foley seems to imagine that P-Zed will lead angry hordes of atheists and liberals to attack good Catholics as they try to worship in peace. Since he has only asked for additional security during the convention, I can only assume that plans to leave the good Catholics of Minneapolis to a fate worse that death after the convention cameras are gone. Wouldn't that security be put to better use at the airport protecting the delegates from Republican congressmen with wide stances?

Like Cook, P-Zed was soon deluged with letters and blog comments that were abusive, harassing, and occasionally threatening. On Sunday he printed two of the threatening letters with all of their header information. This was one of them:

what I would like to know is how did you even get a job at a collage.

when you are obviously a moron. How would you feel if nice folks starting ranting against Fags, and atheist like yourself.

well sir, you don't get to blaspheme and walk away from this. You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in.

I give you till the first of the month, get that resignation in cunt

It includes all of the hallmarks of the genre: homophobia, misogyny, profanity, irrelevant strawmen, and bad grammar. It also included a return address: mkroll@1800FLOWERS.com. 1800FLOWERS is an online florist, a perfectly legitimate business that many of us have used. P-Zed and some of his commenters expressed the opinion that it was probably fake since no one is stupid enough to send threatening letters from the work e-mail. Others determined that it was a real address and that it was, in fact, sent from the 1800FLOWERS servers. Many sent letters to the florist (too many; P-Zed had to remind them that counter harassment is just as bad a harassment and beg his supporters to stop).

Today we got news that 1800FLOWERS has fired the user of that e-mail account, Melanie Kroll. But here's the problem. Ms. Kroll didn't write the threatening letter; her husband, Chuck, wrote it on her computer while she was apparently out of town. Chuck has written a rambling confession and semi-apology and posted it in the comments of Breaking Spells, a blog that wrote about the issue. He has not, as far as I can tell, said anything directly to P-Zed.

Although it's long, Chuck's apologia is worth looking at in detail. The capitalization, formatting, and such are all his.

Melanie Kroll did not send an email to anyone named Paul. Melanie Kroll did not threaten anyone in an email with death, or as was the case in the email in question, a physical beating.

this email did not come from 1-800-flowers, or anyone connected in anyway shape or form to that company, which happens to provide good paying jobs, for lot’s of folks who might otherwise not have them. they also happen to provide a good product at a fair price.

The fact is, that this email to the so called professor, was sent by an angry male catholic, who was very upset after reading that some crazed person in a position of responsibility, charged with teaching children biology, had been encouraging people to steal and desecrate the body of CHRIST, which for Catholics is represented by the Eucharist.

I know this to be true, since I wrote the original email to this so called teacher.

This is clearly not an apology to PZ Myers, who Kroll denigrates as "the so called professor," "some crazed person in a position of responsibility," and "this so called teacher." Notice the peculiar conservative tendency to reduce college students, people who are old enough to vote, drive, die in war, and occasionally buy beer, as vulnerable "children." It's not only insulting to the students, it's an inflammatory form of romanticism similar to referring to a blastocyst, an undifferentiated bunch of cells in a woman's womb, as a "baby." This is a usage that Kroll has most likely learned from listening to the propaganda of people like Donohue. Make note of the all capitals treatment that Christ gets; we'll see it again later.

Was the tone of the letter terse, and did I say I would beat his brains in, yes I did.

I wrote this in the same way one does when saying “I’ll beat your ass”, “or kick I’ll kick your butt” or other such niceties used by members of the unpolished masses, such as myself.

I live a thousand miles away from this guy.

"I didn't really mean it" isn't a very good defense for sending threatening letters. It's one thing to say something like that to someone in person in a bar or other public place. It's something else completely to commit a threat to writing and send it to someone you've never met. It crosses the line between noise and crime. The "unpolished masses" is a nice bit of populist self-pity.

Upon reflection, and reading many of the comments made, I feel that no matter how mad I was, it did not make it right for me to use the language or tone I used. In fact, I think there would have been many more constructive things I could have done, the angry email was just the simplest way.

And I’m sorry.

This is the clearest part of the apologia. It gets to the point. While it's not clear who Kroll is apologizing to, it's clear that he knows he made a mistake and he's sorry he did. Even though he's mostly sorry for himself and his wife, if he would have stopped at this point, it would have been a great letter. But he doesn't stop.

I wonder if that university where mr. myers is employed excepts any money from the state? And I wonder if the good people of this state know that they are paying good, hard earned tax dollars on such a disturbing creature as mr. myers.? I know for a fact that the University is aware of mr. myers antics, and have disavowed his statements.

I am going to write to mr. Myers and offer him my apologies for using such childish language, and the threatening way in which I presented myself to him. It is my hope that he will forgive me, or hold me accountable. However, I think it is his duty to repair the damage that he and his associates have achieved through their concerted and organized campaign to punish both Melanie Kroll, and 1-800-flowers, who were completely blameless in this matter.

However, this whole incident has caused someone who had nothing to do with the email to mr.myers,.a wonderful, sweet person who would never threaten anyone terrible troubles. Great harm has been done to this wonderful lady, without proof or a question asked, you just accuse, and assume. Wow and I thought you liberal folks were supposed to be the open minded ones.

After insulting P-Zed some more he says he's going to apologize to him for his "childish language." Then he insults the "liberal folks" to who he's addressing the current letter.

It’s somewhat amazing to me, that a guy responding (albeit brutishly) )to a news article about a crazed professor who was encouraging his students and others to desecrate the American catholic church, could turn into this orgy of innuendo, and an attack on an innocent, hard working mother of three, and a company that hires many underprivileged people, and single mothers as a matter of policy.

This follows a few paragraphs where Kroll pleads for his wife and the good name of her, now former, employer. Once again, the element of self-pity creeps in and he once again insults the audience he's supposedly apologizing to, accusing them of an "orgy of innuendo" and "attack."

At this point, you can see the damage done by Donohue's technically correct, but misleading implication that P-Zed made his comments in a university forum. Kroll's statement that he was provoked by "a crazed professor who was encouraging his students and others to desecrate the American catholic church" is wrong in almost every detail. I'll leave aside whether P-Zed is crazed. That's a matter of opinion. I've met him and found him charming and soft-spoken. Others who only know him from his writing might have a different opinion. The key error is that he never "encourag[ed] his students" or anyone else to "desecrate the American catholic church." PZ Myers threatened to desecrate a communion wafer should one happen to come his way. He did not ask anyone else--student or other--to desecrate anything. Most importantly, his comments were not directed at his students or in his role as a professor. They were the comments of some guy with a blog, talking to his readers.

My sending mr. myers that wrongheaded stupid email was never the fault of Melanie Kroll, or 1800-flowers, or the pope, or Bill DONAHUE, not even the president. It was just my gut reaction to statements made by mr. myers and his disciples.

Isn't it a little creepy and cult-like that Bill Donohue gets the same all capitals treatment that is otherwise reserved for Jesus Christ? Even the pope, God's vicar on earth, doesn't get that treatment.

In closing I still maintain that if mr. myers. Or anyone, who is encouraging people to desecrate the Eucharist, or if he is doing so himself, I would like to beat his brains in, would I? I don’t know. I’ve never done so before. Though, at that one moment when I was reading his statements..? I suppose If I caught him doing it, I would try to stop him.

And now he undermines his entire apology. He's never assaulted anyone before, but in P-Zed's case he might make an exception. How does this help his case.

I wonder if all of you perfectly politically correct folks here, the ones who prefer to stifle any thought, or debate that does not fit into the approved thoughts of the day. Would find it so interesting, or funny, if mr.myers were attacking the Muslim or Jewish religions, or encouraging others do so?

It appears that Mr. Kroll's temper has been building as he writes. Whatever spirit of contrition he had at the beginning is now gone, replaced by sarcasm and assaults on an imaginary liberal strawman.

What many folks don’t know, is that mr. myers seems to have a warm spot for the Islamic religion. We know this from his spirited defense of Islam in the past, he insists Islam differs from other religions. It seems that mr.myers can’t even be a good atheist.

His thesis is that, it’s wrong to attack Islamic houses of worship and symbols, because they are poor and minorities. At least that is what a reasonable person would gather from mr. myers past statements.

This is completely incorrect. He has either mixed PZ Myers up with someone else or, as I suspect is the case, assigned all of the attitudes of the strawman "liberal professor" of his imagination to P-Zed. PZ Myers is nothing if not an equal opportunity offender. His atheism and rationalism lead him to be equally critical and hostile to fundamentalist Protestants, Scientologists, Catholics, and, yes, Moslems. Here are a few samples of his "warm spot for the Islamic religion" (here, here, here).

Kroll goes on in that vein for a few more paragraphs finishing with this:

It may very well have resulted (if the recent 30 or so year past is any indication) with the good professor hearing the words Allah Akbar shouted into his ear, while not so nice things were happening to him, perhaps things like, being shot in the lobby of a travel agency, being thrown overboard of his cruise ship, or being shot at the airport ticket counter at lax, or maybe being driven over by a student in the college parking lot, could be the bus he rides would have been torn to shreds by a homicide bomber, or even being murdered while riding his bicycle to work, or perhaps he would have been sitting at his office computer, when one the offended folks drove an airplane through his window.

A big finish that includes murderous fantasies and not a little envy over the willingness of Islamic thugs to act on their violent urges while most Christians refrain.

Chuck Kroll's apology obviously needs work. If he's looking for forgiveness, he needs do a lot more to deserve it. Melanie Kroll is another matter. She threatened no one. He worst crimes are bad taste in men and leaving her computer unguarded. Nether of these should have cost her her job. I'm going to write to 1800FLOWERS and ask them to reconsider their decision. Vengeance against the whole family is only valid in primitive, religious based societies. Modern, secular societies should have higher standards of justice.

Meanwhile, I don't think the story is over. Donohue, Foley, and others are still gunning for P-Zed's job and hoping to get as mileage out of crackergate as they can. They need the persecution narrative to keep their flock in line. For Donohue, there's money to be made through his Catholic League. This sort of kerfluffle is an ideal fundraising controversy. For Foley, fear is one of the glues that hold the modern Republican Party together. The modern GOP has used the culture wars to distract voters from real wars and their economic failures for the last forty years. Foley is hoping to work the old magic one more time. If Donohue and Foley destroy a good professor on the way to their goals, they don't care.

We, however, should care.

Forward into the past

What century is this?

Robert Hurt went to Washington and didn't like what he saw – nudity in the nation's capital.
"Nude women, sculptured women," he told the state Republican platform committee, which sat in rapt attention.

Of all the evils in Washington that the Texas GOP took aim at this week, removing art with naked people from public view was high on the list for Mr. Hurt, a delegate from Kerrville.

[...]

He offered detail: On Arlington Memorial Bridge overlooking the famed national cemetery, "there are two Lady Godivas, two women on horses with no shirt on and long hair."

Actually, they are classical sculptures about war – one called Valor, depicting a male equestrian and a female with a shield, and Sacrifice, a female accompanying the rider Mars.

The Texas Republicans are alarmed that the Florida and Louisiana Republicans has been giving them a run for their money as the laughing stock of the nation, so they have struck back with a party platform more suited to the 1840's Republic of Texas than to the the twenty-first century State of Texas. The Texas Republicans are in favor of returning mandatory prayer to public schools, getting out of the United Nations, teaching intelligent design in science classes, repealing of the minimum wage, and declaring illegal immigrants criminals. They want to outlaw abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother. They are for continuing the Iraq War till "victory" and denounce affirmative action as "racism disguised as social value."

America, this is the vanguard of the modern Republican Party. This is what they are offering.

Liberals want your kids to get clapped up

Why not start the new year with an example of what we mean when we refer to movement conservatives at not being part of the reality based community.

Wendy Wright is president of Concerned Women for America, a group that was originally founded by Beverly LaHaye as a counter-balance to the dangerous feminist tendencies of the National Organization for Women. They are a well financed group that is against gay rights, Harry Potter, abortion, sex-ed, most forms of birth control, pornography, stem cell research, the United Nations, vaccinating girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV), and hate crime legislation. They are for prayer in public schools, teaching intelligent design, abstinence-only sex-ed, the Biblical design of the family, and treating homosexuality as a dangerous, but curable, mental illness. They have been a major player on the religious right for almost thirty years.

Appearing on the December 31st edition of Fox News’ Special Report Wright had this to say about those who support comprehensive sex ed in the schools:

In fact, they want to encourage [kids to choose to have sex] because they benefit when kids end up having sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies and then they lead them into having abortions, so you have to look at the financial motives behind those who are promoting comprehensive sex ed.

Interestingly, she was not laughed out of the studio.

When their arguments fail, scoundrels turn to besmirching their opponents' motives. We only support sex-ed because we all stand to make big profits from tricking kids into getting venereal diseases. Damn! We've been exposed. Oh well, at least if my income from teenage VD futures dries up, I'll still be able to collect my Soros bucks for undermining patriotism.

Home-grown terrorism?

No one is using that word yet, but it will be interesting to watch the reaction to this over the next few days.

Though more than two years apart, the pair of attacks were strikingly similar: Each involved two small explosive devices fashioned from novelty grenades, a Manhattan consulate targeted in the wee hours, and a mystery cyclist as the possible culprit.

The latest attack came early Friday when someone threw the grenades over the fence of the Mexican Consulate [in New York City] , shattering three windows, police said.

Like a near-identical attack that blew out a front window at the British Consulate in 2005, there were no injuries. There also was no obvious motive, though investigators were looking at evidence that suggested the two attacks were connected.

"It looks like two very similar instruments were used," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

In both cases, the devices were fake grenades sometimes sold as novelty items. They were packed with black powder and detonated with fuses but incapable of causing serious harm, police said.

To my mind, the timing and targets of the two events make native American right-wing extremists the top suspects though, as I'll explain below, there is at least one reason to be cautious about jumping to conclusions.

My case against native American right-wingers is this: since 2003, the far right has been fanning the flames of anti-European xenophobia because of the non-support of Germany and France for Bush's war in Iraq. It doesn't matter that Britain has been the biggest supporter of the war, the language of the xenophobes has usually been indiscriminately aimed at "old Europe" in general. Furthermore, the bombs in 2005 were thrown on the eve of a British election when continuation of their participation in the war was being very vocally debated. Bombing the British consulate could be viewed by a dim-witted right-winger as punishing them for going weak on our war, or by a more Machiavellian right-winger, by expecting Islamic radicals to get the blame for the bomb, as renewing British motivation to "stay the course."

This morning's bombing is easier to understand. With CNN's Lou Dobbs dedicating the last two years of his show to warning us about the illegal immigrant threat to take our jobs, sell drugs to our kids, and give us all leprosy; with right-wing talk radio hopping on the anti-immigrant bandwagon; and with Republican candidates for offices high and low competing to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-immigrant violence has been on the rise. It's no surprise that someone would escalate the violence to explosives. Although legal and illegal immigrants come to the United States from every part of the world, anti-immigrant sentiment for the last half century always has ended up focused on Mexicans and other Central Americans.

My case so far has been that the timing and targets of the two bombings make it probable that the terrorist is a right wing nut going after the enemy du jour. However, both of these events need to be considered against the larger background of the post-9/11 paranoia that the administration has so shamelessly encouraged for political gain. While this mood has been particularly hard on Arabs, Muslims, and anyone who looks like they might be Arab or Muslim, it has encouraged a more general insularity and anti-foreigner feeling among those who consider themselves to be the besieged "real" Americans. There is also a possibility that the specific targets were more of a coincidence and that the bomber was merely aiming at any foreigners.

Somewhat related to that possibility is the possibility that the two might be unrelated or that they might be related in the mind of a person who defies simple categorization into conventional Left and Right. As the Reuters' article on the bombings points out, it is not entirely clear that the British consulate was the target of the 2005 bombs.

In May 2005, two home-made grenades exploded outside an office building whose tenants include the British Consulate and an executive linked to a company [Caterpillar Inc.] that has attracted protests for selling Israel bulldozers used to raze Palestinian homes.

If the target of that bombing was Caterpillar out of some kind of pro-Palestinian solidarity and if the two bombings were carried out by the same individual, then we might be dealing with someone who hates Israel and Mexico due to some kind of racial ideology (a Nazi would fit the bill). This is still right wing, but different than a talk-radio listener going after the current obsession of his favorite talker.

Finally, the bomber might just be a nut whose hatreds change from week to week according to a logic not accessible to anyone except himself and the voices.

In any case, this is terrorism and we should not be afraid to call it that. The FBI has no problem calling an environmentalist who vandalizes a construction site or car dealership a terrorist, why the timidity over someone who sets off bombs at foreign diplomatic missions?